Well, I got back late last night from a two-day jaunt to Nashville where I was on a hiring team to interview candidates for chief administrative officer of the General Board of Discipleship. Those kind of meetings are always interesting, although this one would have been more interesting if I had more of a finance background. There was a lot of nodding about things that I didn’t completely understand. A couple people who respect affirmed my thinking about future Ph.D work and teaching (something I’m considering along with pastoral ministry), so that will be something I will keep thinking about. I hung out with a friend of mine who was also at the meeting and we both complained way too much about the General Church, young people in ministry, ordination process, and the like. Sometimes it is nice to get things off my chest with people who can understand, but in this case I think we agreed with each other so much that I just internalized it, such that I’m more than a little disenchanted with the connectional church at the moment. That kind of thing usually passes though.
I’m preaching this Sunday in Louisburg, KS, so I’m starting to prepare my sermon. The text is Genesis 22:1-14. My title is “Unconditional Faith in an Unpredictable God.” The scripture is difficult this week. It is the binding of Isaac, where God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac up Mt. Moriah, prepare an altar, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. When Abraham is raising his knife, God stops Abraham and a ram is provided for the sacrifice. This a tough one to preach. Almost everyone has trouble with a God who tells somebody to kill their son. We want to think about it from Abraham’s, Isaac’s, or even Sarah’s perspective. We want to search for some way to explain that away or dismiss it. How do you take the text seriously and not get sidetracked by those issues? That is going to be the trick. I hope to be able to bring those who hear past their distress or disgust at the story and into a struggle with the idea that we worship a God who is wild and unpredictable, who asks for all that we have and are, who upsets and unsettles our lives. I’ve fiddled with the idea of using a teddy bear (a god who we turn to when we need God) and a book (a god who fits into neat theological systems) as illustrations of ways that we try to construct a predictable god of our own understanding and deny God’s power. I may post it after I preach it. I would like to post a perfect manuscript, but I usually don’t have one of those. I tend to have one that gets marked up and changed in the hours before I preach it.
My new project at work is developing resources to help members of small groups at COR to care for each other. It should be an interesting one. I will be putting together one page summaries or pamphlets to help leaders of the 200+ small groups here to care for their members. There will be resources on divorce, death, hospitalization, birth, etc. It will help remind the leaders of training that they receive, direct them to resources within the church for the individual in need of care, and help them to help the small group to care for the individual, or obtain the healing that they need.
Peace,
Luke
